One Step Better Podcast

Whirks
  • 4.5 (15)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Tune in for insight to help small business owners and their teams get One Step Better every day. You'll gain practical tools to help you improve processes and empower your team.

  1. 5d ago

    Is Your Accounting Firm Developing Leaders or Just Promoting Good Employees?

    At some point, every growing accounting firm takes their best person, puts them in a leadership role, and hopes for the best. And for a while it kind of works. Until it doesn't... Mike and Matt are in the middle of this right now. 60 people, multiple team leads, a director of accounting, and an honest conversation about the fact that being great at the work and being great at leading people are two completely different skill sets. And they haven't always treated them that way. In this episode: Why promoting your best accountant into a leadership role is the most common mistake growing firms makeWhat actually happens when you hand someone a team and say "figure it out"The accountability gap that shows up when leaders don't know what they're actually allowed to hold people toHow to think about training when you already can't fit everything into the calendar you haveWhy developing leaders inside your accounting firm is the highest ROI thing you're probably not doing intentionally 💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it. 🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk. Connect with us: Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0 Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0 patrickaccounting.com Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com

    25 min

  2. May 29

    What's Broken About Your Accounting Firm?

    The best firms don't wait for things to fall apart. They break them first.  Hiring, training, sales, team structure. If you're not proactively challenging what's working, growth will do it for you, and it won't be on your terms. In this episode, Mike and Matt get real about the specific things that broke (and keep breaking) as Patrick Accounting has grown over the past 23 years. The hiring mistake almost every growing firm makes (and keeps making) What it actually costs you to onboard someone without a real plan Why losing your best salesperson can expose a problem you didn't know you had The labor rate percentage that should be keeping you up at night How to manage quality and performance when you can't be in every conversation anymore The question Mike and Matt are asking right now that could change who they hire for the next decade: what happens to your team when AI eats the transactional work? "Right people with the right process are going to change the world. Right people with bad process will still figure something out. Wrong people with a great process? You're not going anywhere." 💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it. 🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk. Connect with us: Matt Patrick on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0⁠ Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠  Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com⁠

    22 min

  3. May 29

    Why Your Leadership Team Needs More Disagreement

    We got into it this week. Real conflict, in a real leadership meeting, between two people who have worked together for almost eight years. Matt came in having already made a call. Mike thought they were still in the conversation. It got tense. And about ten minutes later they were fine.But what happened in those ten minutes, and why it happened, is worth talking about. Because if you're building a leadership team around you as an accounting firm owner, you already know: letting go of control is hard. And when it goes sideways, even over something small, it can feel like a lot more than it is.In this episode: The exact moment the leadership meeting went sideways and what was really behind itWhy letting go of control is the hardest part of scaling an accounting firmWhy Mike tells every new second chair leader to find something to disagree about on purposeThe line between influence and manipulation and how to know which side you're onWhat servant leadership actually feels like from the inside (it's lonelier than it looks)Why surrounding yourself with yes people makes scaling your firm almost impossible💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it. 🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk. Connect with us: Matt Patrick on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0⁠ Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠  Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com⁠

    29 min

  4. May 29

    Are You Ready to Scale Your Accounting Firm?

    Most firm owners ask the wrong question when they want to grow. They ask how before they ask am I willing to do what it takes. Or as Matt puts it: "How much brain damage do you want along the way?" Because growing a firm isn't about strategy decks or revenue targets. It's about whether you, the owner, are willing to do the messy, expensive, slow work of building something that scales past you. Matt's first big bet was hiring a salesperson he couldn't actually afford. Twenty years later, that bet is one of the reasons the firm exists at the size it does today. But the road wasn't a straight line. In this episode: Why "how do I grow" is almost always the wrong first question The 18-month manager gap that keeps most firms stuck for years Why Matt's first salesperson hire cost less and returned more than a CPA The $750K wall and what Matt did to break through it Why we never throttle sales (and the better levers to pull when capacity gets tight) The "give it up anyway" challenge for owners who don't trust their team yet 💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it. 🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Reach out and let's talk. Connect with us: Patrick Accounting → patrickaccounting.comMatt Patrick on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0⁠Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn →⁠ https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠ Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Check out Cloud Accountant Staffing's candidate portal. Full of pre-vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow → ⁠⁠https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick⁠⁠

    27 min

  5. May 6

    One Step Better: A Podcast for Accounting Firm Owners

    If you own an accounting firm, you probably feel a gap between where you are and where you want to be.This podcast is about closing that gap by building a firm One Step Better at a time.Hosted by Matt Patrick (owner and founder of Patrick Accounting) and Mike Shaeffer (COO), you'll hear the unfiltered conversations that happen when you own an accounting firm. The ones you probably have with yourself at midnight, but nobody else seems to be having out loud.This is the show going forward. Honest, unfiltered, firm-owner-to-firm-owner. If you've been listening for a while, the focus is sharpening. If this is your first time here, welcome.🎧 Subscribe now so you don't miss Wednesday's first firm-owner episode: Are You Ready to Scale Your Accounting Firm?💬 Got a topic you want us to tackle? Drop a comment, send us a message, or share this episode with a firm owner who needs to hear it.🎙 Want to be a guest? We're opening the show up to firm owners who want to talk shop. Connect with us:⁠patrickaccounting.com⁠Matt Patrick on LinkedIn → ⁠https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdQ0⁠Mike Shaeffer on LinkedIn → ⁠https://hubs.la/Q04fKVdX0⁠ Tired of struggling to find qualified accountants for your firm? Cloud Accountant Staffing matches you with vetted offshore accounting candidates ready to interview as soon as tomorrow.👉 Check out the portal to get started: https://portal.cloudaccountantstaffing.com/register?p=MatthewPatrick

    6 min

  6. Mar 30

    What We Got Wrong Scaling Our Business (and What We'd Do Differently)

    "You have to be willing to light some money on absolute fire for the goal of what may be." Ever feel like you're growing your business but somehow everything is getting harder, more expensive, and more chaotic? Not sure if you're actually ready to scale or just tired of being stuck where you are? This is one of the most common crossroads for small business owners. Especially if you're thinking about a second location, adding staff, or investing in new systems, but you're not sure the foundation is ready for it. In this episode, Matt and Mike talk about what growth has actually looked like inside their own firm over the last decade: offices that didn't workhires that backfiredinvestments that looked great on paperthe first question to ask yourself if you're thinking about expansion (and it's not finance-related) #smallbusiness #businessgrowth #scaling #entrepreneurship #restaurantowners #homeservices #onestepbetterpodcast #secondlocation #smallbusinessowner

    27 min

  7. Mar 4

    Has Tipping Gone Too Far? A Business Owner's Perspective

    Most restaurant owners think about tips from the payroll side. But your customers are thinking about tips from the experience side, and right now, that experience is broken. In this episode, Matt and Mike talk about tipping culture from both sides of the table. As customers frustrated by guilt tipping, receipt clutter, and being asked for 25% on an empty cup. And as accountants who keep finding restaurant clients eligible for the FICA tip credit that no one ever told them about.  They compare the U.S. tipping model to what they've experienced overseas, talk through why transparency and simplicity are a competitive advantage, and challenge the "that's how everyone does it" mindset that keeps most operators stuck. We get into: Why the checkout experience at most restaurants is working against you The difference between earning a tip and guilting someone into one The FICA tip credit and why most eligible restaurants have never claimed it What "no tax on tips" actually changes for employers vs. employees Why simplifying your tip structure is a customer experience decision, not just a payroll one If you run a restaurant and haven't rethought your tip policy in a while, this episode will make you look at it differently. Not just the compliance side, but the way your customers feel when the check hits the table. Subscribe for weekly conversations on running a smarter, more profitable business. #OneStepBetter #RestaurantOwners #TippingCulture #FICATipCredit #CustomerExperience #SmallBusiness #RestaurantManagement #PricingStrategy

    18 min

  8. Feb 26

    Your Tip Structure Has Payroll Risks You Haven't Thought About

    Most business owners set up their tip policy once and never think about it again. That's usually when the problems start. In this episode, Matt and Mike get into the compliance side of tipped employees that most owners don't hear about until they're already in trouble. They cover why overtime math gets ugly when tipped and non-tipped hours land in the same week, what happens when nightly cash-outs create paychecks with zero withholding, and how the One Big Beautiful Bill just expanded FICA tip credit beyond restaurants for the first time. Highlights include: Why tipped overtime isn't calculated the way most owners think What net zero paychecks are and why your employees blame you at tax time The 80/20 rule and how it changed who can do what during a shift How FICA tip credit just expanded to salons, spas, and other tipped industries Why "we've always done it this way" is the most expensive sentence in your business If you have tipped employees and nobody has explained how all of this actually works, this episode will show you where the risks are before they find you. Subscribe so you don't miss Part 2, where Matt and Mike flip to the customer side of tipping and why the checkout experience at most restaurants is quietly working against them. #OneStepBetter #TippedEmployees #FICATipCredit #SmallBusiness #RestaurantOwners #SalonOwners #OvertimeRules

    18 min
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4.5
out of 5
15 Ratings

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Tune in for insight to help small business owners and their teams get One Step Better every day. You'll gain practical tools to help you improve processes and empower your team.

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